Bumper the White Rabbit

by George Ethelbert Walsh

Instead of poking his head out cautiously to investigate, he walked straight from the hollow trunk into the very jaws of the fox. There was a sharp click of teeth, and Bumper felt a terrible pain in one of his long ears. He must have leaped five feet in the air, and another five feet sideways. The fox had missed his neck by an inch, but to make up for this mistake, he now pursued the rabbit, leaping nearly as high in the air to catch him as Bumper.

Terrified by the attack, and not knowing what to do, the white rabbit jumped this way and that, clearing high bushes and landing in dense thickets that tore his fur and hurt him terribly. But the fox followed him, paying no attention to the briers and thorns.

It was a narrow escape. For a moment Bumper thought his time had come. He couldn't get back to the hollow tree trunk, and there was no other hiding-place near that the fox couldn't follow him in.

It certainly would have gone hard with him, and the rest of his adventures could never have been told, if a couple of blue jays hadn't built a nest in a tree directly over him. The commotion in the bushes startled the birds, and with loud, shrill cries they darted down to see what was doing. The sight of the fox angered them. Foxes robbed birds' nests whenever they got a chance, and the blue jays knew this. Therefore, a fox in the neighborhood of their home was not to be tolerated.

They flew down like two blue streaks and landed their sharp bills on the head and face of Mr. Fox. One stroke came so near to one of his eyes that he dodged and ducked, and stopped pursuing Bumper long enough to snap at the birds.

But the blue jays were prepared for this, and they kept well beyond his reach. As soon as he turned from them to the rabbit again they flew back to the attack. They punished him unmercifully, pecking at him until he was so angry that he could hardly see straight.

Meanwhile, of course, Bumper was taking advantage of this interruption. He was running through the underbrush as fast as he could until he was far ahead. Right and left he searched for a hole or any kind of an opening he could crawl in. And there, just ahead of him, appeared what he was looking for! This time it was the hollow branch of a giant tree hanging down, with one end still attached to the trunk.

Bumper was in the hollow branch like a flash. Mr. Fox reached it just a moment too late, and to vent his anger at losing the rabbit the second time he clawed and snapped at the branch as if he would rip it asunder. But the limb, with a decayed heart, had a stout shell, and the fox soon gave it up in disgust.

Now, the hollow branch, as you know, had one end on the ground, and the other still attached to the trunk where the wind had broken it off. So Bumper found his hole slanting upward, and as he crawled through to the other end he was actually climbing a tree. Perhaps you have heard that rabbits can't climb trees, but Bumper did in this instance.

When he reached the upper end, he found himself ten feet from the ground, with Mr. Fox below and unable to reach him. It was such an unusual sight to see a rabbit up a tree that the fox was more puzzled than ever. "Could white rabbits climb trees?" he asked himself.